This paper empirically explores the effects of payroll taxes, value-added taxes and corporate income taxes on a variety of labor market outcomes such as employment, unemployment, informality, and wages. Using national-level data on labor variables for 15 Latin American countries, the results...

While the relationship between business cycles and employment is a topic of continuing interest, it has received limited attention in the literature focusing on developing countries. This study adds to the literature as it analyzes the heterogeneous correlations of the business cycle with...

This Working Paper assesses the impact on investment of a reduction in corporate taxes and the impact on employment, labor formality, and growth of a reduction in non-wage labor costs in Colombia. First, and following Hall and Jorgensen (1967), we estimate an investment function, which depends...

This paper studies the effect of mandated employer-provided child care on the wages of women hired in large firms in Chile. We use a unique employer-employee database from the country's unemployment insurance (UI) system containing monthly information for all individuals that started a new...

This paper examines the implicit subsidies within pension systems across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. We first calculate the theoretical benefits of pension for hypothetical workers in 25 countries in LAC. We show that, on average, LAC's pension systems are subsidized, as they...

We study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the pension policy response on the private and public pension systems of Peru. We find that the policies allowing early withdrawals from the private pension balances imply a significant reduction in expected pension wealth by about 40 people, yet...

Using an impact evaluation methodology for interrupted time-series and the IDB Pension Projection Model, this study estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic could have notably effects on the private pension system in El Salvador as a consequence of the relaxation of requirements to repay early...

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...